Hey Pandas, What’s Your Wildest Family Story?

My dad was quite the delinquent when he was young. It's not something he's particularly proud of and I don't often hear stories from those days. But a few years back one of his oldest friends came into town for a visit. We'll call him Jim. He got super drunk and started telling old stories.

At one point my dad gets sort of twitchy and tries to change the subject but Jim doesn't really get the hint. To this day what he told me is one of my favorite stories ever.

Apparently, when they were young teens, they got in with the wrong crowd and these boys convinced my dad to try and rob somebody on the street. So he and Jim looked around until they found a woman they thought would be easy to scare.

He walks up to this woman with his hand in his pocket like he's got a weapon and tells her to give him her purse and she won't get hurt. Only she walks right by him like he hadn't said a word. He looks at Jim and the boys across the street who motions at him to get on with it. So he steps in front of her so she can't walk by and tries again.

The woman stared at him for a minute before raising a hand to her ear and politely tells him she's deaf and doesn't know what he's saying. He looked back at the group across the street who don't know what's happening and they try to hurry him again.

Not knowing what else to do, my dad pulled his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a twenty, then motioned to the wallet and her purse. She thought he was asking for change. She pulled out her wallet and held out a few bills. Unable to go through with it, he simply traded the bills, thanked her, and walked away.

Jim said he was beet red when he came back over to the group and explained to them that not only did he not rob her, but she actually shorted him a dollar. Needless to say the boys weren't very impressed. Jim thought it was hilarious.

But my dad agreed it's probably for the best things went down they way they did. He was glad not to have gone through with it and he and Jim wound up going their separate ways with the group of trouble makers in the end.

In the mid 1970s my parents and I were at my grandparents’ for the weekend. They lived in rural area, without much going on at the time and the local ne’er do wells were all known to the county sheriff’s office. Even as a 5yo, I had caught the drift that my granny’s brother wasn’t a good person. He was an alcoholic and took advantage of other people whenever he could. The family had tried to get him to get out of the lifestyle he was in, but he liked it. That weekend, the sheriff came to my grandparents’ house and asked to speak to my grandpa. My granny’s other brother was there and they went outside to talk. When they came back in, my grandpa told us the troublesome brother had slipped on ice in his driveway and hit his head. He was dead. Years later, my mom told me that my grandpa had told her that the sheriff had told him and my other great uncle that that he had likely had been hit in the head, fell and froze. The sheriff let the 2 men decide what to do about it. They said he most likely got what he deserved and an investigation including his wrongdoings would only embarrass and traumatize his parents, making the whole thing worse. So, he slipped and fell

My father is a retired surgeon, a graduate of Mexico's National University. When he was in his twenties, he was sent to a tiny, secluded village in Tabasco, southest Mexico, for social practice. This was the early 1950's, mind you, and that part of the country was barely developed outside state capitals and ports.

My father has some wonderful stories about this time.
First was his "competition": a witch-doctor called Don Temo, that even the local teacher swore had shapeshifting abilities after dealing with "The Bad One". Once, my father was called by the family of a peasant that had been bitten by a venomous snake, but the Don Temo intervened, saying that he had already given the man some remedies, and if in three days time the man was still ill, then they could ask the "little doctor" for help. My father laughed, saying "in three days time, don't bother. The snake is really venomous, he is going to die!". He was ignored. However, the remedy worked. My father still says he has no idea what the witch doctor gave to the man, as the snake can kill a man in a couple of hours.

Another time he was almost lynched by the locals after another patient, who my father had patched up when the man had chopped off his big toe working in the field, had neglected the instructions about keeping his wound clean and got a nasty infection. He was accused by the man's wife of "bewitching" him, and my father was almost dragged out of the small clinic with just one knife for protection. Keep in mind, he was around 22 at the time and barely out of medical school. He was saved by another man who saw his credentials and mistook the university's logo for the government's. My father took advantage of it to claim that he was a government doctor, and that the army would come if he was harmed (it was a lie). The mob set him free.

A third time was when he was promoted to director or a new hospital. It turned out to be a river ship, sort of a floating hospital. When he was at "his ship", as he tells us, he had to cure a local cacique (sort of a de-facto authority) from internal bleeding caused by heavy drinking. The man was lifted to a hospital in Villahermosa, the state's capital, six hours away. The payment was six or seven times my father's monthly wages, and on top of that the cacique gave him an one-eyed horse who my father named "Glass Eye".

As my father is getting old (he is nearly 90 now) he was been writing these stories in a book. He self-published it last year. It is called "Memories of an ordinary doctor". It is great to hear those.

My father, one of his brothers, and their cousin married three sisters, so my sister and I share all four grandparents with two of our cousins. I joke that my family tree doesn't have many branches.

In the 1950s, I think 1957, my German grandparents fled Cuba under gunfire.

Wild but wholesome: fam n i did a trip to Disney world. We scheduled to ride the rise of the resistance ride (back when you had to que for it) and GREATLY enjoyed it! After we got off the app still showed us as "active" my dad asked the line runner about the supposed bug. Dude saw me n my mom waiting in the shade and waved us over. He was impressed about our honesty about the glitch and ushered us back into the line to ride again! Again this was when it was a "oy one ride a day" deal to ride it! It really made the trip special!

My maternal grandparents were deposed of everything they had when communist came to power in early 50s. They were living in a rural area and had a large area of cultivated land, cattle, and tools. This was done on a large scale through the whole country (following the politics of Stalin in the Soviet Union), and it was called "collectivization". Basically, the state took everything you had, and then you had to work for the state on your former land, for a minimal pay. There was no way you could protest or oppose; whoever tried was either shot or sent to prison as a "saboteur" and "enemy of the state".
The first year after collectivization my grandparents realized they would literally starve if they continued to work for a symbolic pay. They moved to the capital, found jobs in a factory, built a new house with a courtyard and garden. Obviously, these took years of hard work, but they started again from zero, and managed to provide their children (my mother and my uncle) with a much better future. I spent my early childhood in their house, playing in their garden full of flowers and fruit trees; I remember it as a heavenly place. Kudos to them.

Well, I'll go with a simple story. My grandfather (mom's side) was actually asked by Hugh Hefner if he'd be willing to help fund "Playboy Magazine".

This is because my grandfather was a self-made accountant with his own firm in Chicago. My grandfather turned down Hefner since he didn't think "Playboy Magazine" would be successful!

That's why we didn't get Playboy Magazine in existence until around 5 years later! My grandfather really missed a good money-making opportunity on that one.

Many many wild stories, but here are two. 1. A few of my cousins committed self-unaliving. Mostly due to dodgy internal family issues. You can guess. 2. Another set destroyed evidence because they were being investigated for this. Broke into the guy's house and smashed his computer. Dodgy bunch. Needless to say, I do not speak to them anymore, haven't done so for more than 10 years.

My great great great grandfather was Dr Virgillius Doud Remington. Lets's just say he played an important role in the life of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS church. It's google-able. My dad had a mental breakdown when he found out my first husband was raised LDS. Thought the church would (end) me. Well they didn't, I'm really not a notable or important person with no good or bad feelings towards that church in particular, I'm pretty sure they didn't notice. Plus I had to divorce the scumbag who was on meth the whole time less than 2 years later. So any vengeance owed me was gotten in that sense I suppose.

My dad told me he followed the Sex Pistols on one of their concert tours, I think, in UK. I can't vouch for the truth, as I have no proof. But that's what he told me, so it goes down as a story.

Right now: newborn baby-panda in the Netherlands!!! https://nos.nl/l/2528950